40 Photos Of Christmas Dinners From The Past 100 Years That Show Just How Much Life Has Changed

Think about Christmas dinner and you’ll likely conjure up a picture of a family affair centered on a large roast turkey. That’s certainly the traditional view of the yuletide meal. But as you’ll see from this gallery of 40 photos, while some things about Christmas dinners remain remarkably similar, others have changed considerably over the past century or so.

40. Birds to go

This early 20th century photo from London gets right to the heart of what Christmas dinner means to so many people – a roast bird. Sainsbury’s today is one of the U.K.’s biggest grocery store chains, still filling Christmas shopping baskets. But if you go into one of its modern stores, you’ll find that all the birds are neatly wrapped in plastic. Probably more hygienic if less visceral.

39. Free Christmas dinner

This shot from 1905 illustrates the fact that not everyone had the wherewithal to provide themselves with a lavish Christmas dinner. But luckily, in Denver, Colorado, at least, the Volunteers of America were there to fill the gap. And the charity is still going strong today. But does the turkey know what the future holds?